(1+1=2)

#METASWAG Summer 2011 Theme:

Celebrity Couples On The Beach

Thesis

If you can't blog three times in a month, your summer is either too lazy or not lazy enough. Personally, I've kept a fairly regular rotation of lazy and busy days, such that I never feel motivated to blog. Today's post is completely unmotivated. Worry not, fearless reader, this means it will be a short (readable) post!

Risky Summer 2011

This summer I'm taking risks! It's important. Health risks, like eating cream-cheese-salsa and chips for dinner and staying up til 7 in the morning. Social risks, like meeting new people and talking to people I haven't in ages. Leadership risks, like combining Dungeons & Dragons Club with a Feminist Book Club (can't take full credit for this lunacy). Travel risks, like driving alone to Chicago to see B.o.B. and a good friend.

All of these risk should eventually lead to some sort of constructive change in my overall performance of self, so that by the end of the summer I'll be the most well-rounded and exciting person in the entire world.

Selected nice things about being home for 3 1/2 months

> Homemade breakfast

> Playing Portal 2 and FIFA

> Quietude

> Family

> Download rates of > 1 mb/s
> No fear of being judged for crying while listening to "Purple Rain"

This Is A Music Blog (Unmotivated Edition)

Though for months I have unabashedly championed Grouper's stark and breathtaking A I A as the standalone shoe-in for Best Album Of 2011, a new record has entered the fold that is simultaneously much more listenable, and much more complex. Gang Gang Dance's Eye Contact and tUnE-yArDs' w h o k i l l are fabulous, full-blown spectacles, but neither have the something special of my newly-crowned (and obv subject-to-change) Best Album Of 2011.

Channel Pressure [2011; Software/Mexican Summer]

by Ford & Lopatin

It's The Best Of The 80s in a glitchy and modern sonic landscape, where everything sound like synthetic emeralds. I've gotta stop making good music sound bad. More accurately: simply the most well-constructed pop music of the last who-knows-how-long (since "All Of The Lights"?). The songs, while hella fun to dance to alone in your living room, reveal so much depth in headphones. I suggest trying both.

See below for a selection from this pop masterpiece.

Conclusions

Let's be honest, I've listened to Beyonce's "1+1" seven times in a row. Let's be honest again, this was not a very short blog post. It is, nonetheless, a blog post that kept me from the dreaded (2) next to May's blog output. I don't know where this arbitrary standard of 3 posts/month came from, but I darn well intend to meet it.

Happy Summer! June will be the month of regular blogging (empty promise).

"Break Inside" from above-mentioned Best Album Ever

Special Bonus Song

Rapture

I N T R O S P E C T I O N

Thesis

Existential crises are cool in the summer, because you can have them in the sun. This is the first real blog of the summer, one that has come on the heels of hefty reading, lots of Netflix instant-streaming, and a fair amount of self-examination.

#SUMMER

I've tried to keep myself busy (and my business varied), which has resulted in a ridiculous number of #tagged summer themes this year:

> Ambitious Summer 2011 (because I'm working on myself a lot)

> Nerd Summer 2011 (because I'm playing D&D and writing X-Men fanfic)

> Smart Summer 2011 (because I'm reading lots of feminist and social theory)

> Productive Summer 2011 (because I'm organizing FACIU with other feminists)

> Metal Summer 2011 (because I'm listening to lots of Liturgy and Krallice)

> Cartoon Summer 2011 (because I'm watching cartoons with Ted online)

Real Talk

Most of all, as I've discussed with RZA, this has been a summer for thinking about myself and what I do (which doesn't mean I've become a better person; how do you do that?). I'm just tryna take my thoughts and words into more careful consideration, because language is everything, because I want to perform a different sort of identity, because I've all-too-often been an unwitting annoyance (I'm probably talking to you).

This has meant, of course, wondering why I blog. For the most part, it's to get attention. I want my friends and others to read what I write. I've come to enjoy writing, and especially writing when I know others can comment on it, respond to it, acknowledge it. So I blog to seem eclectic and different and interesting and smart, but also because it's fun. Right? I've also questioned where the voice in which I write comes from. That one's a real head-scratcher. This isn't how I talk in person (duh, because this is written). But this isn't how I write papers for school, or how I write in my diary, or how I write on forums, or how I write on Twitter. #METASWAG writing feels more conversational, affectedly intellectual, self-deprecating and self-aware, but still self-serious. Right?

I wonder if people who talk to me on a daily basis would recognize the voice that has been developed and is developing on this blog. I'd hope something of the personality I perform regularly is noticeable here, but there's no guaranteeing that (especially given the different ways I act around different people).

Funny enough, my writing that is most masturbatory (music reviews) is the writing that I enjoy the most and have written even when I didn't expect anyone to read it. I've also realized it's my most inaccessibly writing, because it isn't really written for any audience but myself. Then again, it is, because it's published on this blog. Contradictions.

Conclusions

I guess I haven't come to any. It's a process, fam. The next blog (hopefully before the end of May, so my monthly tally doesn't reveal serious slacking on my part) will feature more conventional topics, like what I've been reading, listening to, and watching. Why do I feel compelled to write about all this stuff?

tl;dr I BLOG BECAUSE I DO

Before You Go, Enjoy My Latest Obsession

S.O.S.

Get a taste of this.

Thesis

Summer nights are meant for this. This can be any number of things.

This:

> Eating Cap'n Crunch and reading political philosophy

> Blogging about the mundane (or reading friends' blogs)

> Watching "Super Bass" over and over again

> Looking up freeware for formatting screenplays

> Examining the Beetlejuice Wikipedia page

Yes, summer seems perfect for this. And this seems perfect for me right now.

Unpacking my headroom

School sucks (no, it doesn't). But these past few weeks were difficult. Dead week was entirely Undead and mercilessly Evil. Finals week was no less hardhearted. I know yours was awful too. We had papers and exams and all sorts of messed up work to deal with. But the worst part of the year's end was the lack of interpersonal contact.

Mealtimes became stolen minutes between manic cramming (on Tuesday, I absorbed a bag of chips out of necessity). Conversations shriveled into absentminded sympathy exchanges (I'm not sure you really heard anything I said, and I know I didn't hear what you said). Pleasantries no longer matter (I know we're friends and we just made eye contact, but my face can't smile).

I wasn't able to say goodbye to half the people I wanted to.

So, more accurately, finals suck (duh). And only if you're lucky does the end of finals allow for a moment of clarity. I was lucky. Or I made a wise decision to stay one last night in the dorms. It was worth it, to say goodbye to my room and to myself as a student. I was finally able to take my time and learn some new things. I learned how to play Go. I learned how to sell my books for more. I learned how to order a new sandwich at Dagwood's. I learned how to learn about myself (watch The Taste Of Tea). I learned how to move out.

The last memories of my dorm room will be of "I Think I Can" waking me up and "Vapor Trails" tucking me in. Of vacuuming the edges of bare walls. Of stretching one last time before leaving. As much as it was a shared space (mostly with the lovely girlfriend, but with all you guys too - I remember the movies and music and laughing), it was the first space of my own.

Right now, I'm sitting in bed tying this out, with my lil bro's vacant bed right across from me (where is he?). For the second summer in a row, my little bedroom reminds me that I'm not grown up yet. I wonder if this is a 4½ tatami room.

HAGS/LYLAS

That I'm not yet an independent young professional doesn't mean my summer isn't promising. Excepting July's holy trinity of shows (Animal Collective, Gang Gang Dance, Kurt Vile), there's also my reading list

> The Years by Virginia Woolf

> Snow Country by Kawabata Yasunari

> Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

> and many more...,

June's LOTR:EE theatrical run, planning for the Indiana University Feminist Action Coalition, a not entirely unrelated Dungeons & Dragons club, regular diet and exercise (laugh with me), hella hours at DQ, chilling with the girlfriend, chilling with the bffs, and some serious creative writing.

If this seems like more than I'll be able to take on, I'll just take on as much as possible. Obviously a few are going to be taken on no matter what (I'm looking at you LOTR). Sounds like a lot of fun to me!

Conclusions

Trying to type quietly will cost me my word count. This means I'll once again be saving ideas for the theoretical Best Blog Post Ever. Can you believe I'm leaving a lot unsaid? Before my enforced bedtime ends this post, I'd like to say (rather than being the worst person ever and denying the reality of the maternal instict) Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers who deserve it. This means especially my mom, who I cherish. Gushier stuff will be (note tense) written in a card, but a public acknowledgment must be worth something.

Goodnight, fam. I'll leave you with some poetry that is not my own.

"Laughing Hieroglyphic"

by Avey Tare

The flies in the dark with their ways

Of shedding some light, now I've lost all my day

I think they are very lucky

With internal parts like illumined sun rays

It's so easy to get

Lost in the mixture

When forces strike hard

You wear your layers or you'll shiver

I didn't think you were

Struggling so long

With all of the wild things

That we took so young

How it must have wrapped you up

And left you hanging upside-down

When I was too busy getting lost in

The big sound, the big sound

Now I'd trade in all I'd saved

To fly to those nights and ask, "How are you brother?"

If we could have just engaged

I'd have enhanced my weakness in comforting others

But the words are all jumbled and faded

My heart is a nurse, but my tongue's in the blender

Now it's become something creative

I know it's not much, but just let it right into your gut

And hold me, I've been sad for days

The light does change its gifts, every hour's devoured

But the same things haunt me, what's haunting you?

Lately I've been seeing beings

They look like they float at the back of my headroom

I don't find it strange, but I'm talking to you

Lion in your dreams,

The lion is good for your dreams, accept the lion

The lion would probably try and come and embrace you too

And when I get fucked up, I'll do the best

To make myself not fucked up again, my heart and my lungs too

Why can't I do the same for everyone I love too?

How about it'll be you and me and the leader of the ghosts

How about it'll be you and me and the leader of the ghosts

Lately I've been seeing beings

They look like they float at the back of my headroom

I don't find it strange, but I'm talking to you

Lion in your dreams,

The lion is good for your dreams, accept the lion

The lion would probably try and come and embrace you too